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Saturday, December 31, 2011

I hate it when I start to compose
and the pen runs dry.
It makes me wonder, sometimes
if this universe speaks
in conspiratorial metaphors,
but I could just be paranoid.
You see, I was just trying to write a sestina.
The title was going to be Mr. Happy's Fly Swatter.
It was going to utilize six prompt words
I scavenged out of my favorite Big Poppa E poem.
The girl, she had a big nose.
She was engrossed in a conversation
with a kinky haired guy at the bar.
They were drinking red wine
from fat snooty glasses.
Coke bottle lenses covered her eyes.
Her smiles were magnified across the room.
He said that there was no normal.
She agreed.
I was just standing there eavesdropping
while I waited for my coffee to finish its drip.
I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I broke in like an unwanted car fart.
I said, “I was the icon of normalcy in America.”
My name is Mr. Happy.
I have a fly swatter.
I love the sound maggots make
when they swim through a tub of honey.
I got a hot water bottle.
I screwed the hose
into to a wet-dry vibrator I found in the laundry room.
It worked great on Ms. Honey’s hole.
She liked it more than the cat did.
So, I dug a shallow grave.
I buried the cat
along with the cat food
I didn’t need anymore
in the back yard.
I threw in the flyswatter
and that empty tub of honey
and smoothed the hole over
with ink that exploded
into my hand from a worthless pen
I bought at super Wal-Mart mega-store.

---Purple Mark 122311

Friday Prompts:

“If you’d like, you can start your transmission after the high-pitched squeel (sic) that will be your cue to make a statement about yourself...” Antero Alli. The Akashic Record Player. (Falcon Press, 1988) page 40.

“Her skin is white cloth, and she’s all sewn apart and she has many colored pins sticking out of her heart.” Tim Burton. Voodoo Girl: The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy And Other Stories (Rob Weisbach Books, 1997) page 51.

“Then comes at speed, Margaris of Seville, who holds his land as far as Cazmarin, Ladies all love him, so beautiful he is.” Translated by by Dorothy L. Sayers. The Song Of Roland. (Penguin Classics, 1964) page 89.

On 12/8/2011 Andre submitted to me 6 Words: Competition, Abundance, Good, Evil, Angels, Demons. Andre found this website through me. I met him at a Thanksgiving feast at my aunts house in Salem. I hope you like what your six words became.

“How about some sex? I will gnaw gently on your thighs, I will fuck you until your God is dead.” Michael Crossley. French Letters. Seattle. (A spoken word piece).

"At the heart of the successful conclusion of the granulation process is the individual’s ability to judge the moment and the duration of when these conditions obtain, usually covering a period of only three or four seconds." Oppi Untracht. Jewelry: Concepts And Technology. (Doubleday Press, 1982). page 357.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

"We just buried my mother, Ariel,"
She enlightened the waiter who didn't ask.
Roger didn't know how to respond
When I told him to, "Throw the shoe into a pit."

She explained how she wanted it to Ariel.
He jotted down her order with intensity
As if he had just ringed a horse shoe against the stake.
He yelled to the cook 'cross the diner.

"Roger scribbled strange symbols on a pad.
It was a voodoo spell he cast long ago," she said.
The cook leaned across the grill to spit
Flem caressed the frying egg like foreplay before a cyber rape.

Roger’s voice sounded like a voodoo spell cast
into a gust of freezing drizzle.
She was fondled in a cyber-room rape.
Richard Hugo was her mother's undoing.

His heart broke in a gust of freezing drizzle.
In Silence, Ariel listened enraptured by her story.
He pondered over the footprints of her mother's demise.
"She's gone," she said, "buried under a glacier of permafrost."

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

An Interpretation of Song of Solomon

Let her kiss me most beautiful among women,
all over my body with kisses from her mouth.

This sensation of being in your hungry embrace
is more delightful than sipping
chocolaty cappuccinos under Zion’s evening sky.

When your name is spoken, “Jezebel,”
it drips off my tongue like buttery honey
my ear smells it like amber perfume
wafting through the courtyard of your gardens.

That is why all the young men want you, desire you,
“Jezebel,” when they imagine your dance,
their eyes glaze over at the first mention of your name.

Draw me into your sultry embrace
I will eagerly follow you to Zion’s edge.

Bring me into your bed chamber most beautiful of women.
Kiss me all over with kisses from your mouth.

THE LOVER AND HIS GARDEN II

I have come to this garden, my lover, my bride.
I have come to gather your fragrance and your spice.

In my mouth, I savor your taste like I savor honey and chocolate.
I drink my coffee and I eat cherry muffins
Recollecting memories of last night.

HOMECOMING

Who is this coming up from the desert,
leaning so sensuously upon her lover?

Under the apple tree I awakened you;
it was there, under that tree,
that your mother and father conceived you;
it was under that tree,
illumined by the mother’s spring warmth,
that they first consummated their love.

DISCOVERY

Where has your lover gone
most beautiful of women?
Where has your lover gone
That we may seek you without him?

My lover has gone down to the valley where his garden is,
to rest in the beds of your spice,
to browse through the mounds admiring white lilies.

My lover belongs to me and I to her.
She browses, aimlessly, among the lilies.

---written on December 5, 2002. The poem was found (on 8/23/11) in a Journal of other peoples poems I used when I busked poetry at Pike's Market in the Summer & Fall of 2004

Saturday, December 10, 2011

A bolt falls out on the ground
The car moves on
A spring rattles loose
Clinks quietly on the highway
Black smoke billows out the back
The engine sputters to a halt
The driver gets out
Lifts up the hood
Steam rolls out the headers
The startled driver jumps back
Away from the searing heat
Falls head over heels off the road
Breaks his neck against a rock
The socket wrench clatters to the ground
Without a sound

Prompt: A bolt, A rusty spring, and a 8mm socket

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Watched And Watching

I’m being watched by many
and I can’t move or watch them in return
because for most of an hour
I’m their model: a Star of Seattle.
I keep my eyes on the one chair
that no one sits in, high in the corner.
As my rods and cones give out
parts of the chair disappear
its horizontals and verticals fade
and its shadows become more real than it.
While I’m still, the others are in constant
movement; looking at me,
then at their drawings, over and over
with almost birdlike motions.
Others drift in and out of my peripheral
vision in odd displacements of color
becoming purple or blue themselves
though in truth they are mostly black.
One guy cycles through the red orange range
as he walks across the room crowded by easels.
My eyes water, dried out by my need
to keep them focused on that unused chair
and I find that my balance is not so stable
as I try to remain unmoving.
By the time my session is done,
my legs are trembling with fatigue.
I’m handed a drawing of myself done in pastels
for my efforts and the next model
in red is ready to take the stand.